Lyra is a knockout!

Campfire Audio is a new headphone company based in Portland, Oregon. Its new Lyra is a knockout!

I was on the New York subway listening to a set of Campfire Lyra in-ears, and a young woman approached me saying she loved the look of the headphones. She wanted to know what brand they were, and did they sound good? I told her they were the new Campfire Lyras, and yes, the sound was really nice. I explained I didn’t own them, I was reviewing them for my CNET “Audiophiliac” blog, and she immediately put the URL in her phone. For the next five minutes she asked all sorts of questions about the Lyras, and the Astell & Kern Jr music player I was using with the headphones, but it was the Lyra that first caught her eye.

She didn’t ask the price, which is $749 (AU$1,099), and in a crowded subway car I didn’t think it was a great idea to announce I was wearing a set of pricey headphones. I’m mentioning the encounter because in all the years I’ve reviewed headphones, no woman has ever expressed curiosity about a headphone before.

Lyra sounded sweet with my iPod Classic, but the sound really came alive with my Hifiman HM901 music player. That combination sounded big, bold, and capable of unleashing incredibly powerful dynamics. Soundstage focus was precise, treble finely detailed, bass plentiful, but tightly controlled and clear. Compared with the Noble Savant in-ear headphones the Lyra’s sound is weightier, more fleshed out; the Savant is more transparent, more nimble, but less rock-and-roll.